UVALDE, Texas – It didn’t go unnoticed when an 18-year-old who often chatted with his classmates before leaving high school posted a photo of two long black rifles in his story. Instagram.
The picture was surprising enough that a freshman from Uvalde High School sent it to his older cousin on Saturday morning and asked him who would have let the former student get the guns.
“He’s going to shoot something,” replied his older cousin, Jeremiah Muñoz, who had graduated from high school and knew the former student.
The freshman pointed out that next week was the last of the school year and said, in words that would become creepy, “I’m scared to go to school now.” He added a skull emoji.
The exchange adds to the amount of evidence that 18-year-old Salvador Ramos had begun to mock his plans, sometimes obliquely and sometimes more explicitly, in the days and weeks before shot dead 19 children and two teachers in a classroom on Tuesday. .
The freshman was far from the only person who was afraid he might point guns at students in the district.
A 15-year-old girl in Germany had a video chat with Mr. Ramos while visiting a gun shop, unpacking a box of ammunition she had ordered online and showing a black canvas bag with magazines and a rifle. One of his co-workers at Wendy’s in Uvalde said the 18-year-old often hooked up with other employees and customers, and that they started calling him names, including “school shooter.” part for her long hair and dark clothes. A California woman he had met online said he was scared when he tagged her in a picture of his guns suddenly, telling her he was “scared.”
Exchanges raise questions about whether teens who met the 18-year-old should have reported concerns to their parents or authorities, and could also provide warning signals to millions of parents and students who are now wondering how. be the next mass shooting. stopped.
Experts in mass shootings call revelations like the ones that caused “leaks” online and say they are much more common among young gunmen.
Opinion: Texas school shooting
Times Opinion comment on the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
- Michelle Goldberg: As we face another tragedy, the most common feeling is a bitter acknowledgment that nothing will change.
- Nicholas Kristof, a former columnist for the Times Opinion: Weapons policy is complicated and politically annoying, and will not make everyone safe. But it could reduce gun deaths.
- Roxane Gay: Despite all our cultural obsession with civility, there is nothing more uncivilized than the political establishment’s acceptance of the constancy of mass shootings.
- Jay Caspian Kang: By sharing memes with each new tragedy, we’ve created a museum of unbearable grief, increasingly dense with names and photos of the dead.
“You’ll see more leaks among teens carrying out attacks than among adults,” said J. Reid Meloy, a San Diego forensic psychologist. He said up to 90 percent of young attackers could tell someone in advance of their intent to cause harm.
Law enforcement has increasingly tried to identify future attackers by focusing more on their behavior and less on possible motives or ideologies.
At a news conference on Friday, police revealed even more possible warning signs: the 18-year-old had unsuccessfully asked his sister to buy him a gun in September and then, in March, told friends in a group message I was buying. a.
Updated
May 27, 2022, 8:26 PM ET
Later in March, someone was worried enough to send him a message on Instagram asking, “Are you going to shoot a school or something?” to which he replied, “No,” and “Stop asking silly questions,” according to Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Mr Ramos finally bought two rifles with a debit card earlier this month, after turning 18, police said.
People in the orbit of the gunman have given various explanations as to why they did not report the worrying behavior.
The 15-year-old girl in Germany, who met the future gunman on a social media app called Yubo and then texted him and called him for two weeks before the shooting, said she had not been explicit about the shootings. his plans until the day of the attack. , when he sent her a text message telling her that she had shot her grandmother and that she was about to “shoot an elementary school.”
She had been saying for days that she had “a secret” that she would eventually reveal, according to screenshots shared by the girl, who asked to be identified only by her nickname, Cece. He said that even when he said he was about to attack the primary school, he was not sure if he was serious and did not ask a friend to contact the police until after seeing that he had place the shooting, which is unfortunate.
Cece said Friday that she had not been interviewed by any authorities since the shooting.
Several other people who met him online said he had sent them disturbing messages.
Kendra Charmaine, a 17-year-old girl in California, said she had first met him on Omegle, a website where people video chat with strangers, and that they had started following him on Instagram. Soon, she was sending her messages that made her stop responding. “He would respond to my stories with things like ‘I want to kill you’ or ‘I hate you,'” he said.
A study published in 2018 by the FBI found that classmates and teachers were more likely to see warning signs on active shooters under the age of 18 (the UValde gunman turned 18 eight days before the attack). The study also found that when people observed the behavior of a future gunman, 41 percent reported it to the police while 54 percent did nothing.
The study, which evaluated active shooters between 2000 and 2013, found that people who knew the attackers had observed mental health-related behaviors in 62 percent of cases. In 57% of cases, someone noticed that the future attacker had a worrying interaction with another person, and in 56% of cases, the person had disclosed the intent to harm people in some way.
Other investigators who have examined the mass shootings have found that many of the gunmen targeted their spouses and some had a history of violence against women.
However, experts warn that many people who fit the profile of a mass shooter never carry out an attack, which can make it difficult for acquaintances to determine whether the person is a real threat or not.
Keanna Baxter, 17, a high school student at Uvalde High School, attended by Mr. Ramos said he had largely kept himself, but that he had sometimes been aggressive or intimidating with those around him.
Late last year, he said, Mr. Ramos asked her out. When he rejected it, he said that Mr. Ramos started creating different Instagram accounts to send him harassing messages such as “I hate you” or “I’ll hurt you”. Still, Ms. Baxter said he had not been afraid of Mr. Ramos, saying he had never expected them to pursue violence, let alone mass murder.
“Yeah, he was aggressive,” Mrs. Baxter said. “But no one ever thought it was sinister enough to do such a thing.”
Mike Baker, Shaila Dewan and Jazmine Ulloa contributed to the report.